Verified A 3rd Party's Business In Google Places? Google Says Delete It

Often a company will hire a third party search marketing company to handle their Google everything. That includes making sure they are listed and verified in Google Maps/Places. The issue is, some people, especially in the early days, verified their clients under their own Google accounts.

Why is that an issue? Well, if you part ways with the client, there is no easy way to transfer the verified listing back to the client. So what do you do?

A Google Places Help thread has ongoing discussion about the various options. Google's Linda came in and pretty much said, "don't take the high road" and just delete the verified listing from your account. Since it is not yours, you should just delete it. She said:

If you do not own these locations, it is our policy that you do not own them. The owner of this business should have these listings in his own Google Places account. Don't worry about taking the "high road" you should delete the data file from your account. You could notify the business to let them know that they should claim these listings.

I assume there may be some repercussions from deleting a verified listing but as Linda said, it is really the obligation of the business owner to make sure they "own" the verified listing in Google.

There are at least two things I tell my customers to do manually:

(1) Buy the domain names they want for their web sites themselves.
(2) Verify their own listing on Google or give me their Google account so I can do it on their account.

I am sure there are others, but hey - two is shorter than more than two.